


Amid the Thorn

by Esteliel



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Christmas, Convent Petit-Picpus, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Javert Lives, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance, Sharing Body Heat, Stigmata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-05 07:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16806559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: It was on the 6th of December, 1833, the feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra, that the gates of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus, the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration, admitted a peculiar guest.





	1. quasi limam in manibus fabri

**Author's Note:**

> This has become one of my fave winter traditions, so here's this year's (fifth) Christmas fic. Not quite done in time for Christmas this year, but close enough I hope. <3

It was on the 6th of December, 1833, the feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra, that the gates of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus, the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration, admitted a peculiar guest.

The man had been driven to the gate by a fiacre; he emerged with a small suitcase, but no other possessions, and when he knocked, the door opened for him and he was admitted.

So unusual was this event—for the harsh rules of Martin Verga were thus that no men were admitted into the convent, and the nuns within known for the strictness with which they adhered to their rules—that the portress of Number 57, whose windows offered a view of the carriage gate of Number 62, sat up straight in her chair in shock, and then proceeded to watch said gate with great curiosity, eager for the solution to the great mystery that had just come to pass.

The hours passed, yet the gate did not open again, the man did not exit, and the mystery remained unsolved. In the evening, when her husband returned, she eagerly shared the strange event, although her husband remained unconvinced by her observations.

“He will have slipped out while you were distracted by the stove.”

“Bah! I kept watch all day,” she retorted. “Do you think me a liar?”

Her husband shrugged philosophically. “Then it happened for some other reason. Does not the chaplain visit regularly?”

“I know the chaplain,” she said.

“A new chaplain then. Or a different drawing-master. Or perhaps simply a man to fix a stove, or to fell a tree.”

“Nonsense; you know they have a gardener, and a surly fellow that one is. The one who entered was old. There was a sickly look to him. That one isn’t going to fell a single tree in the time he has left.”

“There you have it then,” her husband said. “An old, sick man—perhaps brother to one of the sisters within, come to spend his last days in their care.”

“I suppose,” she said, then nodded, satisfied with the mystery’s solution. “Yes, I’m certain of it. He had that look to him. Mark my words: that one isn’t going to leave on his own two feet.”

The strange visitor was indeed old and frail. Unaware of the commotion he had caused, he had passed through the corridors of the convent with a distant smile, as if he were recalling old memories. A postulant had brought him from the room where the prioress had greeted him to a small chamber at the southern end of the Little Convent, whose rooms were beginning to empty as the strange assortment of nuns residing therein passed away. In seven years, the Little Convent itself would stand empty, and the school would have vanished—but in the winter of the year 1833, there were yet nuns enough to teach the girls who lived and learned in the convent, while the prioress had faith that in time, enough of them would take the vow to fill the convent with the voices of prayer for decades to come.

The chamber the visitor occupied was simple. There was a bed with a mattress, a woolen blanket, and a wooden crucifix on the wall. Beneath it, some past hand had inscribed the words _quasi limam in manibus fabri_.

The man paused before that inscription thoughtfully, then inclined his head and carried his small suitcase towards the bed. The postulant who had led him there had already turned back to return to her duties; now, in the privacy of the small chamber, he lifted the suitcase onto the bed and opened it.

From within, he took a well-worn bible, which he placed on the wooden table next to the bed, together with a copper crucifix. Next, he lifted two candlesticks from the suitcase. These he observed for a long moment. They were made of silver, and heavy. At last, he placed them onto the small table as well. Then, wearily, he entered the bed. He did not plan to leave it again, for the observations of the inhabitants of Number 57 had been correct.

This man was called Jean Valjean, and he had come to the convent to die.

***

It was a Wednesday morning one week later, the 11th of December, when the convent’s gardener first became aware of the convent’s guest.

This gardener had, as was his habit, spent much of the morning methodically cleaning and repairing the tools of his trade that were shelved for the winter in a shed behind the cabin he inhabited. There was much work for a man like him in spring, summer and autumn; but now that the first snow was not far, his work left him hours of leisure, which he filled by preparing for the coming year with the sort of small repairs for which there was little time during busier seasons.

“Why,” he said to himself when he heard a strange commotion from the other side of the garden, “is that not the voice of Mother Saint-Ange?”

He wore a bell at his knee, which alerted the nuns to his presence. This same bell tinkled merrily now as he approached the little garden facing the Little Convent, which was blocked from view by the poplars that grew there.

Before he had made it past the poplars, a group of nuns approached, among them Mother Saint-Ange, whose voice he had recognized.

“I do not know how he got up—he was nearly too weak to walk,” she said. “But he must be found.”

The gardener halted, confused, for he was the only male inhabitant of the convent, save for those days when the priest would visit.

“Who must be found, Mother Saint-Ange?” he asked respectfully.

“Father Fauchelevent,” the nun replied, and a tremor went through the gardener.

“But Mother Saint-Ange,” he said, “is not Father Fauchelevent four years dead now? I tended to his grave last month to prepare the flowers for the winter.”

“There is another Fauchelevent—a brother who is still alive, though old and sick.”

“And he is here?” the gardener demanded.

“The prioress granted him the favor to spend his final days here in the convent,” she replied gravely. “We tend to him. This morning, he was too sick to rise—but just now, when Mother Saint-Augustin went to visit him, she saw that his chamber was empty, and that the door to the garden stood open.”

The gardener looked at her in great confusion, although he did not ask further questions. “Then I will search the garden for you.”

***

Jean Valjean was walking through a thicket of brambles. Thorns tore at his skin, piercing the soles of his feet as he trod upon them, but still he went forward. He could not say where he was going, or whence he came, but there was a great urgency in him.

He was fleeing something—he recognized the urgency clenching around his heart, for he had been forced to flee many times in his life. Surely this was but one more test, one final, desperate escape to make before he could lay himself down and find the peace he longed for.

All around him, the brambles seemed to shift, crowding closer and closer, reaching out for him with thorny tendrils. Every step was painful; still he made his way forward, although he knew not where he was going.

Once, he thought that he heard a bird call, and then the laughter of a young girl. It woke a desperate longing within him, and he found himself stumbling through the thicket of brambles, ignoring the pain as the thorns dug into his skin.

He could not say for how long he made his way forward. It was difficult to see where he was going, or where he had come from. The forest of thorns was almost impenetrable, and his hands and feet bled where the thorns had wounded him. Still he made his way forward, drawn deeper into the forest by the sound of laughter still ringing in his ears like a sweet, distant bell, so faint now that he feared it might only be a memory.

His limbs felt heavy, as though they were weighed down by chains of lead. The light seemed to vanish around him and the air grew colder and colder. Still he struggled forward, desperately listening for that distant, bell-like laughter.

But it was no good. The sound could no longer be heard. Blood was dripping from his hands and his feet, his skin punctured by thorns, and when he stopped, exhausted, and with great difficulty raised his eyes to the sky, he saw that the light had faded away. Something dark had moved in front of the sun—something cold and black, more of an abstract thought come to life than a person, bending down towards him until he felt himself trembling at its inevitable approach.

It was only when large, strong hands closed around his lapels that he recognized the vision that had come to torment him. It was the ghost of a man who was dead, and who, in his living days, had hounded him much like a demon.

When he was alive, this man had been known as Inspector Javert. Now his specter was bending over him, his eyes glowing like coal, and Jean Valjean, who could no longer hear that distant peal of laughter, lacked the strength to struggle. His body limp, blood still dripping from his wounds, he surrendered himself to the demon’s grasp, the thorns tightening around them before darkness mercifully swallowed him.


	2. cæca quadam obedientia

It was dark when Valjean struggled back to wakefulness.

He was in his bed. A candle was burning, and someone sat in a chair nearby, watching him.

His heart gave a fearful jolt when he remembered the ghost that had haunted his dreams; a moment later, he realized that the person wore the familiar habit of the Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga: the black robe of serge, the black woolen veil, the black guimpe. Valjean relaxed once more. His body ached, and he was exhausted, as if he had walked for a long time.

Then his gaze fell upon the silver candlesticks, and a smile appeared on his lips. He would not have to walk much further now. He had almost come to this journey’s end.

When he slipped into sleep once more, it was blessedly free of dreams.

Four days later, he was well enough to stand and walk. On this day, the chaplain came, and Valjean would have been able to attend Mass, which the nuns and the school-girls observed from the choir, which was shut off from view by a curtain.

Instead, exhausted even by the slow walk towards the church, Valjean found refuge in a small chapel near the Little Convent. There he knelt for a long time, no longer feeling the cold stone beneath his legs, for the distant harmonies that wove through the air had transported him back to that time when he had first arrived in this convent with Cosette. Fauchelevent had thought that he had fallen from the sky, and Valjean had come to believe that he had been right. That night, God had plucked him from the streets, hidden him from their hunters, and gently set him down inside this walled garden, which more than any other place on earth had taught him the meaning of joy.

To think what might have been had he and Cosette never left this Paradise...

A tear ran down his cheek. His eyes resting on the Virgin, his heart was heavy with thoughts of her, who had found a different Garden of Eden, from which he, Jean Valjean, was barred by the cherubim with the sword of flame.

Even now Valjean shuddered to behold that truth, his back bending beneath the burden he carried.

But where one garden had been barred to him, another had opened its gates to welcome him. It would not be so bad to die now—not here, sheltered by these walls and trees that still remembered the sound of her laughter.

He did not rise until Mass had ended, the chaplain had left, and the school- girls had made their way back into the building that was called the Boarding-school.

Later, when a fever overtook him in the night, Mother Saint-Augustin would not dare to blame those holy hours their guest had spent kneeling on the cold ground in the silent chapel. Nevertheless, regardless of the sacred ground whence it had sprung, it lasted for several days.

By the time the third Sunday of Advent had passed, the sound of the bell at the gardener’s knee had become a well-known melody in the quiet corridors of the Little Convent. Regardless of the weather or the amount of work left to prepare for the change of the season, the gardener would invariably spent a part of every day sitting silently by the feverish man’s side.

“And have they not both been our gardener?” Mother Saint-Ange was overheard to remark one day. “Certainly that makes them brothers. In any case, it is good of him to come. I do not think that Father Fauchelevent will stay with us for long now.”

It had grown steadily colder as Christmas approached. In the morning, when the gardener first rose, the grass outside his cabin was bristling with hoarfrost. His cabin was stacked well with firewood; he did not have to fear the approaching clouds that promised snow. Still, when he woke on the morning of the 18th day of December to the sight of every bush and every tree covered with a blanket of white, he frowned at the sight, and then dressed in his warm greatcoat before stalking along the paths of the convent to assure himself one final time that he had not forgotten even the smallest detail in his preparation for winter.

The afternoon sun shone down onto the snow spreading before him by the time he was finished with his day’s work, walls and hedges all covered in glistening white. In the distance, clouds could be seen, promising further snow.

“Let it come,” he said philosophically, “the kitchen is stacked with firewood, and the leaking roof in the refectory has been patched just in time. Everything that can be done is done.”

Nevertheless, there was still a strange unease in him, which did not abate until he turned his steps towards the Little Convent, which this year alone had lost three of the relics of other cloisters who had been granted the permission to settle here after the Revolution. The corridor where the convent’s guest resided was completely quiet, the rooms empty. And when the gardener at last entered the old man’s room, he was not surprised to find this room quiet as well, the man asleep.

So it had been every day since he had first begun to visit him. And perhaps it was for the best. The gardener had not forgotten the expression of terror on the man’s face when he had found him in the garden.

He watched the sleeping man for a long time. Every now and then, he stood, using a damp cloth to wipe the man’s forehead, for his temperature still had not come down. At last, when the man shifted, growing uneasy in his sleep, the gardener reached out and covered the man’s hand with his own.

“Jean Valjean,” he said quietly, “be at ease. You are safe here.”

This gardener was no other than Javert, who half a year ago had been freed by this man on the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie. That fateful night in June when Javert had found it impossible to make an arrest, his feet had carried him to the Quai de la Mégisserie. For a long time, he had stood there on the parapet, looking down into the abyss beneath him.

To this day, he could not say what had made him step back down at last, except that there had been a voice in his mind, and it had cried to him:—“Yes, that is well: Cast yourself into the river, abandon your savior, let those who called you ‘that blackguard Javert’ laugh and rejoice and call you mad.”

For a long while after that, he had thought that he was indeed mad. He could not return to his post—not after having sent a letter to his superior, M. Gisquet, outlining several suggestions for the improvement of the service which, no doubt, had in turn already led to his dismissal from the police.

Idly, he had walked the streets of Paris, contemplating once more the sort of honest employment a man like him might find. There were a few years of service yet left to him. His hands were strong; he could work the earth; he would not need to die a beggar when he had seen no need for alms his entire life.

It was then that a gate before him opened, and a small cart emerged, pulled by a man who groaned and stopped to wipe his brow. When he saw Javert, a relieved smile broke out on his face.

“Friend,” he said, “will you help me pull this cart to the market? The horse is lame, and my strength isn’t what it used to be. I have a bottle of wine I’ll share.”

This was how one day later, Javert found himself introduced to the prioress, whose questions he answered with his accustomed honesty and straightforwardness. This in turn seemed to satisfy the prioress, so that a mere hour after that interview, Javert was settling into the gardener’s hut, where now a second belled knee-cap hung on a nail.

For half a year now, Javert had cared for the convent’s garden. He had learned what he could from old Forain, who had patiently taught him his trade until the first frost several weeks ago had at last made his old bones ache so much that he had retired from his position, returning to live with his daughter and his grandchildren, and leaving Javert as the sole gardener of the convent.

The gardener’s life, Javert had found to his surprise, suited him well. There was work enough to be done from sunrise to sunset to keep him busy, and the voice that had plagued him that night in June had not returned. He had thought of his superior, sometimes, and of Jean Valjean, but the matter seemed settled—with Javert gone, there was no one left who knew Valjean’s secret.

Now, there was only the peace of the convent and the satisfaction Javert derived from being useful. Or so it had been, until that day when Mother Saint-Ange had come looking for the missing guest and Javert had found Jean Valjean in his garden, unconscious and shivering, and the disquiet of that night at the barricade half a year ago had intruded once more.

Javert’s jaw moved from side to side as he looked down at where his hand covered Valjean’s fingers. The man did not stir—yet he seemed to have calmed, no longer moving in his sleep.

Javert sat by his side for a long time. At last, when it had grown dark outside and Mother Saint-Augustin returned to check on her patient, Javert rose and returned to his cabin.

Snow had begun to fall once more. The wind had picked up; the air bit at the exposed skin of his face, and Javert was glad when he made it back to the shelter of his cabin. Already the snow was high enough that he had sunk into it as he walked; he did not doubt that with the wind like that, it would keep falling all through the night.

He hastily made a fire, then added enough logs to it to keep it burning through the night. When he retired to his bed, the only sound that could be heard was the howling of the wind outside. He hoped that it would not disturb Valjean’s rest.

***

Jean Valjean was dreaming. He knew it had to be a dream, for there was a familiar, dark spirit trapped in this dream with him: a hunter clad in shadows that billowed like a coat, with eyes burning like coal and hands made to grasp and shackle.

Valjean could not run from this spirit for long. He knew this for a fact, for he had never been able to escape it. At times it seemed to him that he had spent his entire life in this dream, pursued by the creature clothed in darkness, always running, until at last, his legs would not carry him anymore and there was nothing but the panicked beating of his heart and his gasping breath as the creature came closer and closer...

A jolt went through Valjean when he heard a sound behind him. Had the hunter already approached?

Usually, it took longer for him to come that close. Perhaps this meant that today, at last, was the day when those hands would close around his wrists. Today, those fingers would tighten around his throat, and instead of the leaden exhaustion pulling him under, he would at last leave the chains of his body behind, and there would be true rest beyond, where the darkness could not follow.

Still, even as exhausted as he was, Valjean knew that he could not wait for it to find him. The terror of it was too great. He had to run—he had to try, at least.

With great effort, Valjean forced his limbs to move.

He was cold. Snow was falling all around him. There was only the distant light of the moon to guide him, but even in that cold light, there was no path that he could see.

He knew where he was. He had been here before. It was a forest of thorns: brambles and briar roses were closing in on him, threatening to tear his skin should he come too close.

Still, it was too late to turn back now. The hunter was already here. He could feel the familiar, terrifying presence behind him, and he had no choice but to take a step forward.

Immediately, the thorny branches seemed to come even closer. There was no way through them—and yet, he knew that he had to cross the forest, or else find himself caught.

It was so cold that his breath escaped his lungs in little clouds of white. His bones ached, but even so, he forced himself onward.

At first, there was space enough between the thorny trees and bushes that he could walk. Every now and then, a branch would brush him, thorns catching in his clothes. The tearing sound of linen made him shudder, but even so he could not stop. He could feel the hunter’s presence behind him, sensing the hot breath on his neck already.

Snow had begun to fall. It covered branches in a traitorous white, yet beneath the blanket of snow, the cruel thorns still lurked. Valjean’s chest was already aching from the effort when he stepped over a fallen log—and from out of nowhere, the bristly tendrils of brambles snapped against his arm, as sudden as the fall of a whip, biting into wool and scratching the skin beneath so that he cried out.

Immediately, he fell silent again, quivering like a hare in a trap as he listened for his pursuer’s steps.

The forest was silent. His pulse was echoing in his ears, his chest so tight that it was difficult to breathe, and his arm ached, the thorns buried deep in his sleeve. But there was no sound he could make out.

Had the hunter heard him? Was the hand already reaching out, fingers already clenching in triumph before they would bury themselves in his hair to pull back his neck and expose his throat?

There was no sound but the thunder of his panicked pulse. Even so, the dark presence had closed in on him.

His pursuer was close, very close. How easy it would be now to lower his head and surrender, to wait for that final moment when the hunter’s jaws would close around the prey...

Shivering, Valjean forced himself to lift his other leg. With difficulty, he made it past the fallen log, the brambles eventually tearing free of his coat.

For long moments, he continued to stumble through the forest. Snow kept falling, and for a short while he hoped that it would hide the footprints he had left, so that the pursuer would lose the trail. But the presence behind him never faltered, and eventually, trembling with exhaustion, even that hope died within Valjean.

The forest had closed in on him. If there had been space enough to walk before, even that was gone now. All around him, a thicket of brambles stretched, tearing at his clothes like greedy hands.

Valjean forced himself onward nevertheless.

Snow was still landing on his upturned face. Somewhere, there was still an open sky. Somewhere, there was a sun, a moon, stars to guide a weary traveler. Valjean could not see them, but even now he could not stop hoping that if he walked just a few more steps, if he made it past the brambles, he would reach the edge of the forest, and there would be freedom waiting beyond.

Not much further ahead, he could see a light now. There was a gentle gleam—like that of light falling into a clearing beyond the thorns.

With renewed strength, Valjean pushed onward. The brambles seemed to reach out for him, but he ignored the scratches, keeping his eyes on the faint light that beckoned to him.

Once, he cried out when he trod upon another fallen log and thorns pierced his feet.

Had he not worn shoes when he had set out on this journey? Now his feet were bare, and when he looked down, he saw that the white snow was stained with the crimson of his blood. His coat was gone, too. He trembled as he took another step forward, for now there was no wool to protect his skin. He wore but a simple shirt of white linen, and when he continued forward on his bleeding feet, he heard the thin fabric tear when it caught in the thorns.

But the light was close now—so close that he could almost feel its warmth on his face.

Was the hunter still behind him? He could not say, even though his heart was still pounding with the terror of his flight. But the earlier awareness of the fearful pursuer behind him had left, replaced by the cruel pain of the thorns.

A tear escaped his eyes when he took another step forward, another thorn piercing his foot. His arm ached where the brambles had scratches his skin. But even though there was no opening in the thicket of thorn, he continued onward, drawn towards the light that promised a final rest from this eternal flight.

Branches seemed to grasp at him like cruel hands, thorns as sharp as knives raking across his skin. Then, at long last, the brambles seemed to pull away. A path appeared where there had been none before: an alley of dark trees that opened into the clearing of light.

He had barely strength enough to lift his feet. Even so, he continued onward, ignoring the pain of his wounds as he stumbled out of the brambles. His heart was beating so fast in his chest that he could not catch his breath. His lungs ached, his ears were filled with the roar of his blood, and still he took step after step forward, leaving behind prints of crimson in the pristine snow. There was one last fallen log to cross, its wood black against the pale snow, covered in wicked thorns.

Valjean did not hesitate. He lifted his foot, and although a cry escaped him as the thorns pierced his sole, he did not falter, the brilliance of the light before him increasing even as sharp pain sliced into him. He stepped across the log—and then, from out of nowhere, a thorny branch shot out.

In the time of a heartbeat, he found himself caught, the pursued entrapped at last.

Briar roses tangled around his arms and legs as he cried out in final terror, trembling as brambles tightened around his limbs until he was held powerless, a helpless prisoner of an inhuman tormentor who knew neither compassion nor mercy.

As Valjean weakly struggled, he felt himself pulled against one of the cruel trees of black wood. The briar roses tightened around his wrists, thorns piercing his hands until he felt the warmth of his own blood run down his frozen arms.

It was still bitterly cold. He could no longer see the light that had once beckoned him. He could no longer feel the hot breath of his pursuer either.

The forest was silent. He was alone.

At last, pinned against the tree, his blood dripping into the snow, he wept, for in these final moments, he knew that he would die as alone and abandoned as the impenitent thief on his cross.


	3. ut voci Christi

In the middle of the night, something woke Javert. Perhaps it had been the howling of the storm, for when he sat up in his bed, the room dimly lit by the stove, he could hear the window panes rattle.

For a long moment, he hesitated. At last, he rose. He lit a lamp and stepped towards the door, still clad in nothing but his nightshirt. Here, the wind was even louder, and he shivered when he rested his hand against the door. Then he pulled it open, peering outside.

The snow had piled up high enough against the door that it took effort to open it. A gust of icy air came in, making him hunch his shoulders. Even so, holding his lamp he peered outside, where the light now revealed that the wind was still driving snow against his cabin.

If it kept snowing like this all night, he would have a hard time going outside tomorrow. Already the snow was high enough that he would be buried halfway to his knees. When was the last time they had seen such a winter storm?

It was no wonder he had woken. Regardless, there was nothing for it but to return to sleep. He would deal with the snow tomorrow—and he would need to be well rested for it.

He closed the door, still shivering. And then he hesitated again, instead of returning to his bed to slip beneath the covers that would have retained his body heat.

There was no sound but that of the wind. The lamp had revealed nothing but the sight of snow and more snow, falling relentlessly from the dark sky. He was the only person awake right now. A storm was a storm; there was nothing to be done for a man like him, who would deal with the aftermath tomorrow.

Javert told himself all these things with the calm rationality that until then had made up his entire character. And yet, he found, he could not make himself move away from the door.

He had heard no sound, but even so, something still called to him. Some old, nearly-forgotten instinct within him had sat up, like the hound who catches a scent on the wind, and now the restless instinct within him pointed obstinately forward—outside, where the wind was raging.

“The deuce,” Javert muttered at last in annoyance. “There’s no sense in walking through the snow on a night like this. No one’s awake but me. It’s the middle of the night. Any honest, sensible person is in their bed. Only a madman would go outside in this weather, and at this time of night.”

He hesitated again for a long moment. Then, at last, with a sound of annoyance, he put down his lamp and began to dress himself.

“Perhaps the roof has started leaking again. Or worse—come down, what with the weight of the snow. I will take a look at it, and then return and go to bed.”

He added more wood to the fire, so that it would not burn out during his absence. Then, buttoning his collar up to his chin and pulling an old cap down over his eyes, he opened the door once more, lamp in hand, and made his way out into the storm.

It was still snowing heavily. The storm had begun to abate a little, or so he thought—the snow was falling even heavier than before, but the wind was no longer howling as loudly. The garden was utterly silent; there was not even the distant sound of song.

The alley of poplars blocked the Little Convent from view, but the veil of snow was so thick that he could not see the windows of the church, which would be illuminated gently from within even at this hour.

The further Javert walked from his cabin, the harder it was to make his way forward. The snow had piled up high here; if it kept falling like this all night, it would be as high as his knees tomorrow.

The prospect did not please him, but nevertheless, he continued onward.

It was the roof of the refectory, where the building of the Great Convent ran close to the wall along the Rue Petit-Picpus, which had leaked incessantly all autumn, and which he had thought finally repaired just in time before winter had arrived.

Now, his lamp held high, he made his way through the heavy snow, gritting his teeth to keep from rebuking himself out loud for this foolish venture.

Even if the roof had sprung a leak, what would he do? Go up on the roof in this weather? At night? He might just as well have jumped into the Seine that fateful night.

At the sudden image of the abyss looming before him, he stopped, struck by a strange feeling. Then he shook his head at himself.

Nothing had come to pass tonight. It was indeed a peculiar coincidence that Jean Valjean had come to the convent—but the man had nothing to fear from him now, and Javert would reassure him of that as soon as he woke.

Then he realized that the snow was no longer as deep. Perhaps he might never have taken note of that, had he not stopped for a moment. But before him, something—or someone—had passed through the snow, just as Javert now did.

Javert lowered his lamp. Someone had come from the Little Convent—well, perhaps Mother Saint-Augustin had felt the need to look after one of her charges. Perhaps Valjean’s condition had worsened, and she had looked after him before returning to the Great Convent.

He frowned as he followed the path in the snow, much of it already covered by more of the rapidly falling snowflakes.

It came from the Little Convent, where Jean Valjean was housed, as were the aging nuns whom the revolution had deprived of their orders—but none of them were strong enough to withstand a storm like this.

Suddenly worried, Javert began to follow the path. It did not lead back to the Great Convent. Instead, it began to veer to the left, and soon, Javert found himself walking along the wall. Javert was hurrying forward now, although even for a man of his imposing height, the snow was so high here that he could not progress fast. Nevertheless, the urgency in him had grown, for there was no shelter ahead—just the ruins of the old convent and the thicket of brambles which had sprung up there, which he and Forain had not cut back. Since the old convent was no longer in use, their time had seemed better spent on the garden that fed them.

The moon stood high when Javert at last made it to where the ruins sheltered him from the storm. The wind had died down and it had stopped snowing. Every now and then, snowflakes were still drifting down from the sky, but the cloud cover had broken, revealing the pale moon.

In its silver light, Javert saw before him what he at first took to be the remnants of a pietà: here was the lifeless body of Christ, there was the blood. Only the Virgin was absent.

It was not until he took another step forward that the light of his lamp reached the ground. At the sight, his breath stuck in his throat.

It was not an old pietà that had not survived the ruin of the old convent.

It was the body of Jean Valjean that was spread out before him in the cold moonlight, wearing nothing but a white shirt in the bitter cold, entangled in the cruel grasp of brambles that had pierced his skin.

“Good God, what have you done now?” Javert muttered at last, something constricting around his chest as he fell to his knees in front of Valjean, disregarding the brambles that tore at his coat.

He wore gloves of leather; even so, it was difficult work to extricate Jean Valjean from the thicket of thorns. It was not just the brambles: behind the bushes that carried berries in the autumn, there were the remnants of old rose bushes. In the summer, the roses covered the wall and the ruins of the old convent with their vines and flowers that gave off a sweet perfume. Now, in the winter, stripped of their flowers, all that remained were the vines, as hard as wood, their thorns long and sharp. It were these same thorns that had pierced the hands and feet of Jean Valjean as he must have stumbled into the thicket, blinded by a fever. Blood had dripped into the snow; more blood now came spilling over pale, frozen skin when Javert freed him from the thorny embrace as carefully as he could.

One by one, he took Valjean’s hands into his, lifting limb after limb. Valjean never woke, his face as pale as the snow in the moonlight.

At last, Javert was able to rise and carefully pull Valjean into his arms. The once so powerful body, housing a spirit that had thwarted him again and again, now rested limp and still in his arms. Only the gentle rise and fall of Valjean’s chest betrayed that he was still among the living. Valjean’s skin was ice-cold. Tears had frozen on his cheeks.

He needed the warmth of a fire and a blanket immediately, if he was to survive the night.

The obvious choice would have been to carry Valjean to the Great Convent, where Mother Saint-Augustin would be able to help. And yet, with the snow so high and the wind starting to pick up again, Javert felt deep inside that there was no time to make his way through the storm and the snow into the convent proper.

Determined, he tightened his arms around Valjean. Then he stepped away from the ruins of the old convent. He followed the path in the snow he had left earlier. The walking was easier, and in the distance, he could see the beckoning window of his cabin, still illuminated by the fire he had fed before he stepped outside. He was grateful for whatever instinct had led him to that act; Valjean needed to be warmed up immediately. There was no time to lose.

“You foolish man,” he murmured as he hastened towards his home. “Will you now die before I have a chance to talk to you? After all this time, and for you to come here... You cannot die. Not yet. Do you hear me?”

Jean Valjean gave no sign that he had heard. The wind was sighing mournfully. The cabin was close, and Javert, who had not prayed in all these months since he had entered the convent, now lowered his head and mumbled a wordless plea as he pushed forward as fast as he could.

At last, he reached the shelter of his cabin. Javert hurried inside and put Valjean down on his bed. He shoved more logs into the stove until the fire was burning high, then, with trembling fingers, stripped the frozen shirt from Valjean’s unresisting body.

Valjean still had not moved. The once so powerful body rested on Javert’s bed, silent and still, except for the blood that still trickled from the wounds every now and then.

Javert grabbed hold of a blanket and then began to vigorously rub Valjean down.

“Live, damn you,” he said. “Stubborn old man, you cannot die. Not now. I won’t allow it.”

Valjean did not respond, but his skin, at least, was no longer pale as ice. Javert’s scrubbing had made it flush, and when Javert pressed his ear to Valjean’s chest, he could hear the beating of his heart—a faint, sluggish sound, but it was beating.

Hurriedly, Javert wrapped Valjean in blankets. Then he heated water and began to clean Valjean’s wounds. There was still a thorn stuck in Valjean’s left hand—a cruel thorn of dark wood, as hard and sharp as iron. Javert pulled it free, and as he did so, more blood welled up, crimson against the pale skin.

Carefully, Javert washed the wound, then bandaged it with strips of linen. When he reached out for Valjean’s other hand, Valjean groaned, and even though it was a sound of pain, Javert felt hope well up inside him.

Thorns had pierced this hand as well. One of them, a wicked, black thorn, had settled beneath the skin, and no matter how Javert tried to get a hold of it, it seemed impossible to pull free. At last, his jaw clenched with determination, he fetched a knife. In apology, he rested one hand on Valjean’s chest, somewhat reassured by the way his chest rose and fell more rapidly now.

“I am sorry,” he said, and then set the knife against Valjean’s skin.

Valjean’s hand trembled in his as Javert cut into it. Valjean did not try to escape his grasp; even so, he made a sound of anguish. Javert gritted his teeth and pushed the blade a little deeper—and there, at last, it was.

All it took was a little more pressure. Then, finally, among the blood that was welling up, he was able to grasp hold of the thorn and pull it free.

Blood was running from Valjean’s palm, whose fingers had begun to helplessly curl inward.

Javert found himself grasping hold of the pierced hand again—and then, for reasons he could not say, drew it to his lips to press a kiss to the rough back of Valjean’s hand.

A moment later, he took up the cloth and the bowl of warm water again to clean the wound. Valjean was trembling by the time Javert wound another bandage around his hand, but he still did not open his eyes.

His hair was damp from the snow that had melted. Javert paused for a moment to fetch a towel and press it gently to Valjean’s face and hair.

“Can you hear me?” he asked. “You’re safe, Valjean. Nothing will happen to you here, I promise.”

Valjean still did not respond, although Javert thought that he could see his eyes moving beneath his lids. Was Valjean still lost in a fever vision? 

Javert pressed his hand to his brow again, but although Valjean’s skin was no longer quite as ice-cold, he had not entirely warmed up yet.

No fever then—at least not for now. Perhaps later—if he managed to warm Valjean up—the fever would return as well. But that was a worry for another time. Valjean was not yet out of danger.

There were others thorns, which had pierced Valjean’s feet. It took patience to work them out, for they had stabbed even deeper than the thorn in Valjean’s palm. Even though Valjean had not woken, Javert could feel him shiver weakly as he was forced to cut into his skin once more to dig out the wicked thorns.

More blood dripped over pale skin. It stained Javert’s fingers crimson, leaving marks of red on his bed, yet Javert was not to be distracted from his task. The large hands that had once been accustomed to cudgel and pistol, that had dreamed of clenching around the collar of a thief in grim triumph, now worked with the slow patience of a clockmaker, so that later Mother Saint-Augustin, who was feared by all the school-girls of the convent for her stern and forbidding nature, and who was known to find fault in every work, was overheard by Mother Providence to make a remark of satisfaction when she came to change Father Fauchelevent’s bandages.

But for now, with the snow and the wind surrounding them so that their cabin seemed an island in a storm of white, and with Javert and Jean Valjean the only inhabitants of this strange universe into which a large hand had placed them, Javert could not afford to waste time thinking of Mother Saint-Augustin, or of the help a doctor might provide. All he could see was the body of Jean Valjean spread out on Javert’s bed, barely moving, and the sensation of aged feet and hands resting in his own palms, worn by the years and savaged by the thorns amidst which he had been lost.

“There,” Javert murmured at last when a final thorn had been dug free, the wound bandaged and the leg tucked beneath the heap of blankets. “It is done. Now you may rest peacefully.”

Javert hesitated only long enough to add yet more wood to the fire. Then he drew off his clothes, the air already warm against his bare skin, and joined Valjean.

The bed was narrow. It had suited Javert just fine. The bed that had belonged to Father Forain stood against the opposite wall—but with Valjean’s skin still cold against his own, and Valjean still lost in whatever nightmare had led him out into the snow, Javert knew that the only hope he had of Valjean surviving this night depended on warming his freezing body.

He drew Valjean into his arms, holding him close, then ran his hands up and down Valjean’s bare back, trying to rub warmth into his skin. Valjean’s head had come to rest against his shoulder, so that Javert could feel his breath against his throat. The sensation was reassuring. Valjean’s breath was warm, although the rest of him had barely thawed. Javert held him as close as he could, his thigh between Valjean’s, willing the heat of his own skin to sink into Valjean’s—as close as brothers, as close as lovers now, although Javert had not held another so for all the long years of his life.

At any other time, perhaps the realization might have brought a blush to his face, for he had never craved companionship, and in any case had thought himself entirely unsuited to such a thing. But now, with the snow surrounding the house and no sound but that of Valjean’s breathing to fill the air, there was nothing uncomfortable or distasteful about the sensation of Valjean’s skin against his own. There was only, deep inside his own chest, an awareness that his life had become entangled with that of this unlikely man in his arms in a way that made it impossible to step away from him now. Javert could not say how or when it had begun. Perhaps at the barricade, when Jean Valjean’s knife had cut through a rope. Perhaps in a police station, when Jean Valjean’s voice, cold and cutting for all of his much vaunted mildness, had sheltered a prostitute and chastised Javert in a way no superior had done before.

For a while, Javert had thought it was hate; then, righteousness; later, he had wondered whether it might be gratitude.

But now, with the man in his arms, all Javert felt was tiredness and a strange, bewildering sensation he had never experienced before. He felt vulnerable—he, who had always been stone. Where for all of his life, he had been as hard as the thorns that had pierced Valjean’s skin, his heart now seemed as weak as a sapling in spring.

Yet much of that hardness had been left behind that night in June. Javert had not noticed it at first, with his mind in such upheaval. Later, there had been the work in the convent’s gardens that kept him busy with new skills to learn, physical labor that left him deeply exhausted and new routines to grow used to.

Perhaps, in time, these routines would have hardened him too, like a gnarled crabapple that had begun to bear small, wooden fruits only late in its life. It had seemed peaceful enough a prospect, and similar enough to the order that had governed his old life, that he could have grown old here in peace, never venturing outside but for his trips to the market.

Instead, desperately clinging to Valjean’s slowly warming body, Javert felt his old heart tremble in his chest. It had barely survived that first upheaval, which had cracked the wood and allowed a first shoot of green to grow. But could old thorns flower even in the snow?

It seemed impossible. Even so, feeling as small and naked as a newborn as he clung to Valjean, warming him with the heat of his own blood, Javert surrendered at last to the emotions that had slept hidden deep within his heart for all his life.

Javert had left one life behind to find a new freedom in the simple, hard work in the convent. To do that, for a man who had never surrendered in all his life—was there not hope then that he could learn to live even with this agonizing tenderness within him, as fragile as a rose amid the thorn?


	4. ad nutum

When Valjean woke, he could think clearly for the first time in many days.

He still remembered the dream of the thorns and the unbearable dread of dying lonely and forgotten, without even the guidance of the celestial light that had set him on the hard path of goodness long ago.

But there was no snow beneath him now. He was resting on a soft mattress—and for the first time in many days, he felt warm.

It took another long moment until he realized why he was warm.

He was resting against something soft and hot, a presence so warm and comforting it felt as if a cherubim had descended into his bedroom to shelter him during his final days.

Was that how it happened? Had he made his way through the thorns after all and been granted this grace for his final moments?

For a while, that hope was enough to keep him in that state between wakefulness and dream, content to feel nothing but the gentle warmth and comfort of being at long last allowed to leave his burden behind and rest.

Finally, different sensations began to filter in through the haze of content exhaustion. There were aches, and a throbbing pain in his hands and feet. Moreover, he was gradually beginning to realize that he was no longer lost in a dream—and that the presence he had taken for the comforting wings of an angel was in truth the sensation of—

Shocked, Valjean opened his eyes and reared up, his heart thudding in confusion and terror when he realized that he had rested against a naked body. Had he been returned to the bagne? Yet the bed beneath him was soft...

Then he blinked and the room around him came into focus. And so did the face of the man on whose shoulder he had rested.

For a moment, Valjean could not breathe as he stared into the eyes of his hunter. Was he still lost in his dream? Was this a vision brought on by a fever?

It was undeniably Javert, his face framed by bristling whiskers, his brows low as he stared up at Valjean—and his body, against which Valjean had pressed himself a moment ago, shockingly naked, his chest covered by coarse, black hair that grew in a trail all the way down to his thighs.

Then Valjean realized that he was just as naked—and that his hands were bandaged.

“Lie down,” Javert said as he sat up. “You nearly died last night.”

Valjean could feel his heart tremble in his chest. Javert’s hands reached out for him—and then, gently, carefully, Valjean found himself pressed back down into the soft mattress, Javert pulling up the blankets to cover him.

“How do you feel? I think the fever finally broke.”

Javert’s hand pressed to his brow, Valjean found that no word would escape his lips. His chest was still tight, the old instinct and terror warring with the bone-deep exhaustion.

At last, looking up at the impossible specter above him, he gasped:—”Javert?”

The word was little more than a rough croak, but even so, Javert’s mien darkened a little.

“The very same,” he said. “You are safe here—you are still in the convent. I found you in the snow last night. You have nothing to fear from me. I swear it, Jean Valjean.”

Valjean inhaled, the air rattling in his lungs. “It will not make any difference now either way,” he murmured, but then, overwhelmed by a sudden, disbelieving curiosity, he asked. “But is it really you? You were dead. And why would you be here?”

Javert laughed hoarsely, then rose, ignoring his own state of undress. He had long, powerful limbs, his thighs dusted with the same wiry hair that grew on his chest. Even when Javert turned to tend to the fire, all Valjean could see was the powerful frame of an animal bred for the hunt.

After he had added more wood, Javert opened a drawer and drew out a shirt he pulled on. Then, with another clean shirt in his hand, he returned to the bed.

“You almost froze to death,” he explained, although Valjean noted that his face seemed flushed, and Javert would not meet his eyes. “I was certain you were going to die, so I tried to keep you warm with my own body through the night.”

Valjean vaguely remembered the nightmare and the freezing cold. “Thank you,” he said weakly, then found himself flushing as well when it turned out that he was yet too weak to dress himself in the shirt.

It were Javert’s hands that carefully pulled it over his weakened body in the end: Javert’s hands, which had once grabbed his collar, which had once clasped the irons around him. Now those very same hands treated him with a gentle confidence, smoothing the shirt down over his body, then helping him to settle back against the pillows.

“You should drink and eat,” Javert said when he pulled back at last. “I will heat some wine; the bread will be stale, but there is cheese.”

Valjean was too weak to protest, and once Javert lifted some of the bread he had dipped into the wine to his lips, Valjean found to his surprise that his body had indeed returned to life, desiring sustenance with a fervor he had not felt for many months.

“Slowly,” Javert said.

To his surprise, Valjean saw that there was a smile on his lips. Had he ever seen Javert smile before?

It was an odd sight, as unsettling as the sun rising in the west, as strange as a rose blooming in the snow. Regardless, something inside Valjean, which had been poised for flight ever since he had first found himself in the power of his old pursuer, had relaxed. Now all that was left was the exhaustion and the hunger.

When the bread and the cheese was gone, Javert lifted the cup of wine to his lips. “You should sleep some more. It is early yet. It snowed so much that it will be quite an adventure to even get to the Great Convent from here. But once Mother Saint-Augustin sees that you are missing—”

All of a sudden, something fell into place. Perhaps it was brought about by the food, or perhaps, finally, the last of the icy cold had been driven from his body. But when Valjean looked around the small cabin, he knew where he was.

This was the hut where he and Father Fauchelevent had spent so many happy years. But how had Javert come to be here?

“Where—how—” Valjean began, struggling up.

Javert's hand came to rest on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down again. “You’re safe. We’re still in the convent.” Then Javert’s lips twisted into an expression that looked almost amused. “I am a gardener here. And I take it, from what I pieced together, that so were you. To think that I stalked these streets for so many days, never knowing that just a few steps away, behind a wall... But never mind.”

Javert laughed slowly, the sound rusty, as though his throat was not used to it. “You are in no danger. I promise. These days, I am a gardener, and content to be so. Sleep.”

Valjean looked at him in wonder. The sun must have come out, for light now filtered in through the window. It shone onto Javert, who looked indeed much changed in that moment. The sunlight glistened on strands of hair that had gone grey, and it threw the lines of his face into sharp relief. Even so, there seemed nothing of the fearsome tiger in Javert's expression now, and the suspicion that had always burned in his eyes had been replaced by a calmer determination.

Javert looked at ease. At ease, here, in this little hut in which Valjean and Fauchelevent had spent so many evenings with a bottle of wine and some cheese, season after season passing as they planted, harvested and prepared for the winter, only to plant once again in spring.

It was impossible. This, of all the things, seemed even more a dream that his flight through the forest of thorn. But Javert's hand still lingered on his brow, his skin rough and his touch gentle. Javert was real, and so was the bed beneath Valjean.

This was perhaps the strangest thing of all.

Jean Valjean slept for several hours, his sleep blessedly free of dreams. Javert, meanwhile, dressed himself warmly, then made the trek through the snow that had indeed piled up as high as his knee in the garden. He went all the way to the Little Convent, where he found Mother Saint-Augustin with her habit damp up to her own knees, for she had made the very same trek all the way from the Great Convent to look after her charges.

Armed with a salve and bandages, as well as the bread that would have been Valjean's breakfast this morning, Javert at last returned to his own cabin, having reassured Mother Saint-Augustin that Jean Valjean had been found and cared for, and that his fever had broken at last.

Mother Saint-Augustin, who was a practical woman and had many other charges here in the Little Convent, was content enough to let the gardener take on one of her worries. Indeed, when she returned to the Great Convent to inform Mother Saint-Ange, she remarked that it seemed only right to have one gardener care for another, and that surely God must have held his hand over Fauchelevent that night, who had walked out into a snowstorm and been found by the man who had taken his brother's place.

Out in the garden, in the small cabin surrounded by snow, Valjean was still asleep when Javert returned. Quietly, Javert busied himself in the hut where he boiled water for a tea of linden flowers, which he and Forain had dried in the summer. When Valjean woke again, it was close to noon. His sleep had been restless for a while, so that Javert found himself distracted from his tasks, watching over Valjean with a frown.

At last, just when he was reaching out to rest his hand on Valjean's shoulder, Valjean woke with a gasp. For a heartbeat, his eyes filled with shock as he stared at Javert, his body tense.

Javert lowered his hand. “You are still in the convent. Do you remember what happened?”

“You found me,” Valjean murmured, then blinked before he tried to sit up.

Javert assisted him before he fetched a cup of tea and helped Valjean drink.

“I found you,” he agreed. “Out in a snowstorm, all tangled in the thicket of brambles and briar roses that grow in the ruins of the old convent. At first I feared you had frozen to death.”

“I remember being cold,” Valjean said slowly. “And I remember... I remember the forest of thorns. I knew that if I could just find a way out of it, I'd be free...”

“You've been running a fever for the past week. Ever since I first found you. You don't remember that, do you?”

Mutely, Valjean shook his head.

“You looked as if you'd seen a ghost.” Javert grimaced. “I thought you might be afraid that I would arrest you. But your fever's been so high ever since that I could not reassure you.”

“Are you really here?” Valjean murmured, looking at him in wonder.

Javert raised his hand to Valjean’s face again, brushing away a white lock, then felt Valjean's brow. The fever had not returned, he noted with relief.

He allowed his hand to linger for a moment, the strange confusion within his breast arising once more as he thought of how he had held Valjean's naked body in his arms to warm him with his own body—he, who had hunted this man for so long, and Valjean, who once had seemed to encompass everything Javert abhorred about the criminal caste. And yet, there had been nothing distasteful about that night he had held Valjean close. For long hours, he had listened to Valjean's breathing, and his hold on Valjean's body had seemed like a lifeline to him, Valjean lost in a stormy ocean with only Javert's touch to tether him to dry land.

And now that the storm had abated and Valjean had been saved from the sea of his fever, here they were in Javert’s small cabin, like two men shipwrecked together.

“You must rest and heal,” Javert said finally, his hand still lingering on Valjean's brow. “Otherwise Mother Saint-Augustin will be angry with me.”

Valjean nodded hesitantly. When Javert helped him settle down on the bed once more, his eyes were riveted to Javert's face—wary, confused, but no longer filled with terror. It was enough for now, Javert thought, who remained sitting by Valjean's side, for the first time in his life shirking his duties outside of his cabin.

In the afternoon, the sun already low, golden light reflecting from the icicles that had formed outside the windows, Valjean stirred again. Javert had spent an hour outside to clear a path between the Great Convent, Little Convent and Boarding-school. Then he had ventured into the kitchen and begged some cold chicken from the cook, as well as some of the weak broth that had been prepared for the school-girls.

Now, with the broth heating over his fire, Javert once more prepared a bowl of warm water. He set down the salve and the bandages he had brought from the Little Convent, then bent over Valjean, who chose that moment to awake once more.

Yet again, there was a first heartbeat of terror in Valjean's eyes, but this time it quickly disappeared, supplanted by a hesitant smile as Valjean recognized his surroundings.

“You are still here,” Valjean said. “I must be distracting you from your work.”

“There's not much that can be done with the snow this high,” Javert said gruffly. “In any case, Mother Saint-Augustin agreed that it was best for you to recover here, instead of moving you back through the cold.”

Once again he helped Valjean to sit up in bed. Then, as careful as when he had bandaged his wounds, Javert pulled away the strips of linen. Once more he wetted a cloth and cleaned the wounds. For all that he knew that it had to be painful, Valjean's hand rested calmly in his own, his vulnerable palm exposed for Javert's touch.

Javert dipped his finger into the pot of salve. Then, his touch slow but precise, he smoothed salve over the wound left by the thorns. Valjean's fingers were trembling, but he made no sound, nor did he try to pull away, his hand remaining trustingly in Javert's—and Javert, who had so often dreamed of grabbing this very same wrist to close shackles of iron around it, once more found his chest grow tight.

He had not cared so for another in his life, nor had he ever touched another so carefully—afraid of causing harm, rather than triumphant at exerting his own power over a thief or murderer.

Nevertheless, as unsettling as it was to feel Valjean so close and to touch him so intimately, Javert moved from hand to hand, then shifted to the end of the bed to clean and salve the wounds at Valjean's feet as well. Valjean trembled when he unwound the bandages, which were stained by blood. Javert had been forced to dig deep with the knife to remove the wicked thorns, and now, when he gently dabbed at the dried blood with his wet cloth, more blood began to flow from the wound. 

The blood was red and flowed easily; to his relief, Javert could see no sight of an infection.

He smoothed salve over the soles of Valjean's feet, which trembled. Now, for the first time, a soft, muffled sound of pain escaped Valjean. Before he realized what he was doing, Javert's thumb had begun to gently stroke Valjean's ankle, the way one might try to soothe an upset animal. Such tenderness did not come naturally to Javert, who in his life had expressed tenderness neither towards women nor towards a horse or a dog, which some men are capable of though they abhor the company of their fellow men.

As soon as he realized what he was doing, Javert felt heat rush towards his face. He did not dare to look up and meet Valjean's eyes. Instead, he hastily began bandaging Valjean's wound before moving on to the other foot. This wound began to bleed as well as he proceeded to clean it. Once again, for no reason that Javert could discern, he found himself stroking Valjean's ankle in reassurance out of some strange instinct that had never before stirred in his chest.

When at last the wounds were cared for, Javert turned away from the bed, grateful for the chance to recover his composure as he took the broth from the fire and poured some of it into a mug. By the time he had returned to Valjean's side with the broth and a few bites of the cold chicken, his chest was no longer quite as tight, his heart no longer quite as restless.

To his relief, Valjean as well seemed too exhausted to dwell on this strange tableau they had to make. Valjean drank the broth and ate the chicken without complaint, and by the time he was done, he was already half asleep once more. Javert helped him to settle down again, and then, at last, Valjean’s eyes closed and Javert found himself alone to contemplate this odd alteration to a place that had become his home during the past months.

For much of the evening and the night, the small cabin was quiet, the moon shining down onto garden and convent buildings alike. In the Boarding-school, the young pupils spoke with soft, excited voices about the snow that had fallen and not yet melted. It had caused some disruption to the strict routines of their life, which in and of itself was a rare event that caused much delight.

In the Little Convent, an aged nun could be seen working with stiff, wrinkled fingers on the expensive habit of the order of Sainte-Aure, which she could reproduce only in a size suitable for a doll. Nevertheless, when she beheld the resplendent scarlet scapulary, for a moment she forgot all about the bitter cold of her sparse room. Before her mind's eyes, she saw once more the familiar faces of her youth: Mother Sainte-Ursule, to whom she had been close; Mother Sainte-Brigitte, who had taught her how to stitch; Mother Saint-Antoine, whom all the companions of her youth had feared, and who had yet without fear stood up against that wave of the Revolution that had swept away all of her companions, leaving her the sole relic of that order.

In the garden, a single owl glided through the air on silent wings, its shadow swooping over the Little Garden where on many an evening this very same owl had feasted on mice. On this night, there was only a plain of glistening white below, not a single prey in sight.

Once more the owl circled. Then, with a melancholy hoot, it slid over the wall to continue its hunt in other gardens and the convent returned to its state of frozen silence.

It was past midnight when Valjean began to stir in his bed. The fever had not returned, but he was still weak, little strength left to a body that had been starved of love for three seasons

In his sleep, he had grown increasingly restless as the owl began its fruitless hunt; now, as the owl's shadow left the pristine white of the garden, it was Valjean who found himself staring at that frozen wasteland once more, thorns closing in on him. Fearfully, he lifted his hands as if to shield himself from the fate that he knew awaited him. Then he frowned, the spell of his dream broken for once, for as the thorns retreated from him, he saw that his hands were wounded.

Blood was dripping from his palms. Where it hit the ground, spots of crimson spread on the white. Confused, he turned, but the forest of thorns had vanished. All he could see was ice and snow stretching all around him.

He was nearly naked, he now saw, clothed only in a thin, white shirt. There were wounds on his feet as well, dripping blood into the snow. His body ached from the cold, his bones throbbing with a deep, dull pain.

As Valjean shivered, he felt himself grow weaker and weaker. Soon he would freeze to death out here. He would die alone, out in the cold. And he would never find the path that might have led him past the thorns...

With another shiver, he dropped to his knees. A cold, merciless moon shone down on him. He tried to pull himself forward on his hands and knees, but he could no longer feel his limbs. If he closed his eyes now, if he abandoned himself to the cold, it would all be over. But to die like this... To never find that light that had once beckoned, that had promised that all the pain and denial would at last lead to a celestial peace...

Tears were running down Valjean’s cheeks when he woke. It took him a long moment to realize that he was still in the little cabin in the convent. He was trembling violently, so cold that his teeth were chattering. In his dream, he had pushed off the blankets Javert had piled on top of him, and now he found himself exposed to the cold air of the cabin, wearing nothing but the nightshirt.

Still trembling, he tried to sit up and reach down for the blankets that had slid to the floor, but he found that his shivering limbs would not obey him. Fortunately, a moment later, he could hear Javert sit up in his own bed by the other wall.

Valjean was too cold to answer when Javert spoke his name, but a heartbeat later, Javert was by his side, cursing as he felt his brow again.

“What happened?” Javert pulled up the blankets once more. “Here, I’ll add more wood to the fire. You are dangerously cold; how did I not—”

His words cut off there. Still shivering, Valjean tried to curl up beneath the blankets. The ache had not left his old bones, and when Javert returned to his side, Valjean could barely speak. Even so, he managed to take hold of Javert’s hand.

He could not say what he was pleading for; he was so cold that it had become difficult to think. All he knew was that from the corner of his eye, he could see the terrible field of white still lurking, waiting to swallow him once more, and that he was afraid of being alone in it.

After a moment, Javert exhaled. Then Javert's fingers squeezed around his hand before he gently pulled away—only to slip beneath the covers a moment later. “The deuce, you're as cold as an icicle,” he muttered.

Once more Valjean found himself pulled against Javert's chest. He was too cold to speak, but even so, he felt nothing but abject gratitude that someone had taken mercy on him—that he would not die all alone in that wasteland of snow.

Javert's hand came to rest on his hip. It hesitated. Valjean was still trembling, his teeth chattering from the cold, and a moment later, Javert's fingers tightened in his shirt. Valjean was too cold to resist when Javert pulled the shirt off and then followed suit, discarding his own shirt as well.

When Valjean found himself drawn into Javert's arms again, he gasped at the sensation. Javert's skin was so warm it felt as if he was burning. Javert pulled him as close as possible, his arms coming around him, his thigh thrust between Valjean’s legs, and Valjean—who had never before in his life disrobed before a man without his stomach churning with shame, and never without chains or cudgels to show him his place—now found himself filled with nothing but gratitude.

“You'll survive,” Javert murmured against his neck. His breath was hot—and that, too, was no longer the dreadful sensation that had haunted Valjean's dreams for so long. “You'll survive, do you hear me? And if I have to chain you to life with my own hands. You're not going to die here tonight.”

Little by little, the cold receded from Valjean’s bones. Eventually, he was no longer trembling, his teeth no longer chattering. Warmth surrounded him, and he slipped into sleep once more, the snow that still surrounded their hut forgotten as he fell asleep with his head resting on Javert's breast.

He was still resting against Javert when he woke once more. The nightmares had not returned, nor had the cold. His body was warm—and with that warmth, a clarity of sense had returned which he had not felt since he had first been carried into this cabin.

Valjean could feel Javert pressed against his body. He could feel the heat of his skin against his own, the slow beating of Javert's heart beneath his cheek; he could feel the coarse, dark hair that grew on Javert's chest and his thighs, the hard, masculine lines of his limbs, the weight of his genitals nestling against his own thigh. Javert's breath stirred his hair when he exhaled; when Valjean inhaled, he could smell the scent of sweat and tobacco and linden flower that clung to Javert.

Perhaps Valjean should have been afraid. Here, after all, was a man who had not only sought to see him in chains, but who had seen him thus stripped before—stripped not only of his clothes, but of all dignity and all rights. And yet, what Valjean felt at that moment was a profound sense of peace.

For all that he had never felt this intimate press of another body against his own, there was in the warmth of Javert and in the strange fusion of harshness and vulnerability of his embrace a tonic that had chased away the ice in his bones.

Jean Valjean had come to the convent to die. But now, for the first time, a shadow seemed to have lifted from his soul. And although he still yearned for the celestial rest that was awaiting, in that moment, resting like the lamb next to the lion, he felt a touch of that same grace, and the same hand that had once delivered him to this Garden of Eden behind convent walls now seemed to have drawn the blankets over them and granted him rest.


	5. hilariter

Several days passed until Jean Valjean was well enough to walk. During those days, Javert had continued to care for him. In turn Mother Saint-Augustin, who had never before spoken a kind word about another, was overheard to exclaim to the prioress that their new gardener was as holy a man as old Father Fauvent had been. Javert, for his part, had spent not a single minute contemplating the additional work it meant to house Jean Valjean.

After that first day Valjean had spent in his care, Javert had returned his duties during the day, making certain to check on his ward repeatedly. The nights they spent, in unspoken agreement, pressed against each other. They no longer slept skin to skin, but even so, there was an intimacy to pressing himself against Valjean’s body, the heat of skin seeping easily through the thin linen of a nightshirt, which still made Javert’s chest feel tight as something within him seemed to stretch, like a newborn bird unfolding its wings.

In turn, neither the fever nor Valjean’s nightmares had returned, and by the time Christmas Eve came around, Valjean was strong enough that Javert accompanied him on a first walk through the garden.

Soon after the storm, most of the snow had melted away, leaving the garden a sad-looking wasteland of frozen puddles and thawing mud. But on that morning of the 24th day of December, it had begun to snow again—lightly, just enough of the heavy flakes falling from the sky to spread a chaste veil of white over buildings and gardens alike.

“Where do you wish to go?” Javert asked, a hand on Valjean’s arm.

It was easy to touch him now, as strange as that was. But perhaps that should not be so surprising. He was Father Javert, the gardener, now. And surely a simple gardener might have a friend—might even have a brother.

Valjean was silent for a long moment as he looked at the garden. The currants in their orderly rows were covered with snow as well. They had yielded a good harvest this year, Javert thought with approval as he took in their slumber beneath the blanket of white. They had deserved their rest, and would hopefully yield just as plentiful a harvest in the next year.

“Will you show me,” Valjean asked slowly, “where you found me that night?”

Javert mulled that thought over. He could see no harm in it—not as long as he was by Valjean’s side, to make certain that he would not stumble into the thorns again.

“Very well,” he said at last. “You will tell me if you are in pain?”

Valjean inclined his head in agreement.

They walked slowly, for Valjean’s feet still pained him sometimes. Once they had made it past the rows of currants, Valjean stopped next to a tree that bore peaches in the summer. There was a hesitant smile on his face as he reached out and rested a hand against the frozen bark, following a scar that showed where once, a shoot had been grafted onto the trunk.

“That took well,” he murmured with a distant look on his face, and Javert, whose mind had been occupied by many strange things these past few days, now almost staggered beneath the image forming in his mind: Valjean in the old clothes of Father Forain, wearing the belled kneecap, looking after the convent’s garden just as Javert had these past few months.

How strange it was—and how easy it was now to see how it had been, when once, looking at Jean Valjean, all Javert had seen were the uncounted men he had arrested for their long list of crimes. Yet it was true: Jean Valjean had been a simple gardener here for many years. His life had been the same as Javert’s. His routines had been the same as Javert’s.

Even his bed had been the same.

That realization brought a new, uneasy sensation to Javert’s stomach. He hastily pushed it away, taking hold of Valjean’s arm once more as they continued their slow walk.

“I did not even realize I was outside,” Valjean said thoughtfully when they reached the ruins of the old convent. “I was dreaming...”

“One should have words with Mother Saint-Augustin and tell her to keep a better watch on the doors.” Something twisted inside Javert as he looked at the cruel thicket of brambles and briar roses growing there between the ruins and the wall that surrounded the convent. “And these, I think, I will get rid of in the spring.”

“Do not the brambles yield fruit?” Valjean said gently. “And do not the roses fill the air with perfume? Sometimes the school-girls escape the Little Garden; don’t tell anyone, but sometimes they will pick and eat a handful of blackberries here.”

“The prioress would not like it,” Javert said sternly.

In return, Valjean only smiled. He released Javert’s arm and took a step forward. Again Javert felt that same uneasiness well up inside him. He was not used to this vulnerability. Never before he had been so overwhelmed by such concern for another. He was still not entirely certain whether he liked this agony that was tearing at his heart—but he knew all the same that living without it would be even greater torment.

“It is no forest at all,” Valjean murmured, looking lost in thought as he gazed at the tangle of thorny bushes covered by snow. “And there is no way through...”

“You had a nightmare. But never mind. Now that the fever’s gone, it will not return.”

“Won’t it?” Valjean sounded thoughtful.

For a long moment, he kept staring at the thorns. Then, slowly, he went to his knees. Javert felt the same agonizing sensation tug at his heart again, so that he had no choice but to hastily come forward in support. Nevertheless, when he grasped Valjean’s shoulder, Valjean shook his head.

“I thought I would die there,” he said. “It’s why I came here. I am old and tired, and I knew there wasn’t much time left.”

“Good God, what are you talking about?” Javert muttered. “You were strong enough, joining those insurgents just a few months ago.”

“I thought that this was how it was meant to be. After all, what else was there? But then, when death came, I grew afraid. There was nothing but the darkness and the thorns, and I was alone... I have been alone for most of my life. I had no choice. You know what I am. But even so, to be alone at my death, unloved and unmourned—it is a lot to ask of a man. Even one like myself, who knows what must be done. When one has grown used to sunlight after decades of a dark cell, it is ten times as cruel to have to give it up again.”

“You make no sense.”

Valjean paid him no attention. Javert realized all of a sudden that Valjean had been kneeling in the cold snow for too long already; soon, the cold would soak even through the warm, woolen trousers patched with leather that Father Forain had left behind.

“I think it’s time we return inside,” Javert said.

Valjean slowly shook his head. “But where do I go?” he murmured. “Here is the forest of thorn, and there is no path through it. No; and on the other side, there’s just a wall.”

Suddenly concerned that Valjean’s fever had returned, Javert fell to his knees by his side and pressed his hand to his brow.

Valjean’s skin was warm, but not hot. A reassuring sign. Even so, surely kneeling in the snow for much longer would lead to a return of the fever that had weakened Valjean so.

“Come now,” Javert said gruffly. “You’re thinking of a dream. Whatever it is you feared, that’s all over. I am no longer an agent of the police—and if there is some other person trying to blackmail you,” he added with sudden realization, “why, then that is very easy: Remain here in the convent with me. There’s work enough for another gardener, and the prioress thinks highly of you.”

Valjean did not even turn his head to look at him, even though voicing that sudden thought had made something in Javert’s heart expand with painful urgency. And yet even at this plea, Valjean did not react. Instead, his shoulders sinking, his eyes shining as if the fever had returned, he reached out a trembling hand towards the patch of wicked thorns. There was something desolate and forlorn in his eyes—and all of a sudden, Javert saw himself standing before a gloomy void, recalled the roar of the water and the gulf of the infinite below, all paths vanished from his view, the straight path of justice as well as the crooked path of crime, with no escape left from this terrible conundrum but the abyss looming below.

He could see that same darkness mirrored in Valjean’s eyes now, as if he, too, was standing before a great precipice instead of kneeling by Javert’s side.

For a moment, the sudden pain in Javert’s chest grew so sharp that he could not breathe—and then, as if a large hand had reached out to pull away a curtain, the sun shone down on them, Jean Valjean’s hair shining like silver in the rays that bathed them, and Valjean drew in a sudden breath.

Then, before Javert could react, he leaned forward.

For several minutes they had remained before the thicket of brambles now, which had been covered by a heavy layer of snow. Javert, after half a year of growing accustomed to the change of the seasons, would have sworn that below that blanket of white, nothing could be found but dry wood and black thorns, the earth asleep until spring.

Yet when Jean Valjean’s trembling hand reached into the thicket, the brambles seemed to pull away, the thorns did not pierce his skin, and when he pulled his hand back, there was, impossibly, a rose in his palm—a rose in full bloom.

Javert stared at it, so astounded he could not speak. Valjean, too, was gazing down upon it. Neither of them moved while the rays of the sun shone down upon them, the snow gleaming in the golden light.

It was Javert who stirred first, for beneath the briar rose, another splotch of color was spreading in the pristine snow—a red stain that spread from where Valjean’s blood was dripping from his hands, although his wounds had closed days ago.

Drawing in a sharp breath, Javert took hold of Valjean’s hands. Both of his palms were bleeding once more, crimson dripping from wounds Javert had thought healed. Valjean paid the wounds no attention, still gazing at the flower in wonder. Javert, in turn, gazed at Valjean, and then, because he did not know what else to do, he took hold of Valjean’s hand and pressed a reverent kiss to a wound.

Even now, he could not say what had come to pass. But he knew that there had been a great and terrible precipice looming before them, and that celestial grace had enfolded them like a large, loving hand, pulling Valjean back from the same abyss Javert had once faced.

Now, with the rose still cradled in Valjean’s other hand, Valjean’s palms still dripping their sacred blood onto the virgin snow, Javert felt his heart pierced by thorns as well. An agony filled him that was at once so unbearable and sweet that all he could do was to take hold of Valjean’s hands and press humble kisses to the aged fingers.

“Javert,” Valjean said in slow wonder, and Javert, who could no longer contain this thing inside him that his wooden heart had given birth to, reached out and cradled Valjean’s face in his hand.

“Don’t go,” he said—he, who had never pleaded in his life. “There’s space enough in the cabin; there’s work enough here—I don’t care what was between us in the past. I will be a friend to you now; I will be a brother—”

And then, driven by the same thing that still shuddered with the birth pangs in his chest, he leaned forward and buried his face against Valjean’s throat, wrapping his arms around him to hold him as close as he had that first night when they had rested skin to skin, and it was Javert’s own body that had chained Valjean to life.

It was not until he pressed his lips to the skin of Valjean’s cheek that Javert realized with sudden shock that this thing within him, which had slowly grown and beaten its new wings against the cage of his chest, was not a brotherly love at all. With his mouth against Valjean’s skin, a warmth ran through him that made him tremble—and he could feel Valjean tremble in turn.

For a long moment, they remained thus, frozen in time. All Javert could hear was the beating of his own heart, like the tolling of a bell within him; all he could feel was the warmth of Valjean’s skin, the memory of the nights they had rested in each other’s arms burning steadily like a candle within him.

Little by little, reality began to filter back in, and he became aware at last of the fact that it had begun to snow again.

Snowflakes landed on his face and on his hair. Even now he could not let go of Valjean. Instead, realizing that Valjean in turn had not released him either—had not shied back even from Javert’s clumsy lips, from the harsh embrace of arms that had never learned to hold and to love—Javert once more placed his faith in the hand that had led him away from the river that fateful night and steered his steps towards this convent.

Slowly, he turned his head. There was time enough that Valjean could have averted his face. Later, they could have called it an accident, or—more likely—pretended that this one, endless moment, with the snow falling all around them, had never come to pass.

Instead, Valjean trembled as Javert’s mouth found his own. For one long, impossibly sweet moment, they knelt in the snow together, Javert’s arms around Valjean. The kiss was chaste and hesitant, although something had broken free from the wooden bars of its old prison and taken flight once and for all. And Javert, who had never loved before—not as a brother, not as a father, not as a husband—knew in that moment as wings unfolded within him that it was not the thought of Valjean as a friend or a brother that had stirred the heart within him to flight.

In the distance, the bells of the church of Petit-Picpus-Sainte-Antoine were ringing.

It was December the 24th, and on this Christmas Eve, the doors of the church stood open to the neighborhood, the nuns hidden in the choir behind a curtain. Soon, the sweet harmonies of song would fill the garden once more, just as they had on that Christmas Eve so long ago when Jean Valjean had entered the convent with a small child and had thought himself transported to Heaven instead.

The bells were still ringing when Javert at last pulled back, his face flushed and his heart beating fast in his chest, filled with wonder as he looked at Valjean.

“Will you stay?” he asked again, watching as snowflakes kept falling, settling on Valjean’s silver hair.

Valjean did not speak. Again the bells rang out. Javert’s gaze fell onto the rose that was still held in Valjean’s hands. The worn palms were still bleeding, and Javert reverently took hold of Valjean’s hand once more.

“Look,” he said gently. Then, slowly and deliberately, he placed his finger into the wound. Valjean trembled again, but there was no pain in his eyes. Instead, all Javert could see was weariness and fear. Once more Javert remembered Valjean’s terror during the night. What had seemed but a fever dream earlier had now taken on a strange reality.

“See,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve made it through the thorns. The path is not lost. It never was. You have simply reached the end of your journey. You have found...”

_Me,_ he wanted to say selfishly, the newborn heart within his breast hungry, as all young animals are.

“Peace,” he said instead, holding the hands that wept their crimson tears onto the virgin snow.

All around them, the sweet peal of the bells reverberated, filling the garden with such notes of joy and hope that here, still kneeling before the thicket of thorns, Javert dared to believe that if the miracle that had come to pass before his very eyes today was true, then there was another miracle that might happen—then Valjean might indeed choose to remain here and wake every morning with his heart against Javert’s.

Again and again the bells rang out, and when Valjean at last looked at him, his eyes were wide, but no longer dazed.

“Peace,” he repeated softly. “Peace...”

“You have worked here before,” Javert said, a sudden, desperate yearning filling that hollow in his chest where his heart had rested, heavy and still, before it had learned to take flight. “You have lived here before. It isn’t much—but it’s a good life.”

“A good life,” Valjean repeated quietly. He gazed at Javert for a long time, and then, at last, he averted his gaze. Again the bells began to ring. From the direction of the church, song was floating through the air. Snow was still falling; a white flake settled on the red rose that was still cradled in Valjean’s hand.

“I thought I would die here,” Valjean murmured at last, sounding thoughtful. “I did not think—”

“You cannot,” Javert said again, helplessly. “I won’t allow it, do you hear me?”

And surely that was right; surely, if God gave a man’s life into the hands of another, that granted one the right to do what was needed.

“You crossed the thorns,” Javert said again, still feeling helpless. “And see where it has led you. You aren’t meant to die, Jean Valjean. Not here; not now. Look: there is your proof.”

His hands came to surround Valjean’s, Valjean’s blood staining his own hands, but he paid no attention to it. Once, long ago, he had heard a voice shout at him; now he thought he heard the old echoes of that voice once more, gentler now: “It is well. Deliver up your savior. Then have the basin of Pontius Pilate brought and wash your claws.”

Half a year ago, he had been led to this place. Now, the same hand of Providence had lead Jean Valjean here. There was a purpose in this: a purpose Javert could feel in the quickening of his blood, the creaking of his old heart, the memory of warm skin against his own, which had seared his soul like a brand.

With one trembling hand, Valjean touched the petals. Then he raised that same hand, his touch just as hesitant as his fingertips brushed Javert’s cheek as though their roles were reversed, Valjean Thomas and Javert the martyr showing his wounds.

“I do not know if I can,” Valjean said at last. “To live, here... I dreamed of that once. But now everything is changed. My sun has set.”

His fingers trailed along Javert’s cheek. Finally, trembling, they curved around Javert’s nape, Javert’s eyes wide with the same sweet confusion that Valjean could feel even now. And when Javert leaned forward once more, Valjean did not retreat.

Minutes later, with the joyful peal of bells surrounding them, Valjean began to realize that they had knelt in the snow for a long time. Nevertheless, he did not feel the chill. Valjean had been cold ever since he had first come here—in truth, that cold had crept into his bones long months before he arrived at the convent.

And yet, here in the snow that had nearly claimed his life and that had filled him with such terror when he thought that he was to die alone and unloved in the frozen wasteland of thorns, he suddenly realized that he was surrounded by warmth.

The bells were still ringing. Together with each joyful note echoing through the garden, the heart in his breast trembled—no longer a pitiful, shriveled thing that had starved itself to death. His heart was pulsating in time to the call of the bells, and as the bells sang out their message of joy and of hope, Valjean thought of that moment when he had been alone and afraid, and had held out his hand for Javert.

Javert had taken his hand then. That long and terrible night, Javert had sheltered him with his own body.

Now Javert was holding out a hand for him. Even now, Valjean might pull back. Even now, he might return to that small, cold room in the Little Convent and wait there patiently as little by little, his life ran out.

He had been saved from the thorns. A rose had blossomed in winter. Even in the deepest cold, there was hope. There was joy—even for a man like him, who knew the weight of his own sins more intimately than most people.

“I will stay, Javert,” he said, shyly thinking of the warmth of Javert’s bed and the heaviness of Javert’s rough limbs. “If you will have me.”

His hands trembled in Javert’s. For a moment, he wondered if he dared to come forward, that their lips might meet again in that sweetest of torments—but then, the song of bells ever more jubilant, there was the sound of steps in the snow behind them. When Valjean turned his head, his eyes widened at the sight awaiting him.

A woman had arrived in the convent’s garden—a young woman dressed in a coat of fine wool, her hands warmed by white fur. By her side, one of the postulants walked—a woman her own age, whom Javert had encountered in the garden at times, keeping an eye on the school-girls of the Boarding-school where she herself had been educated. These two women had grown up together in the convent, and for the past three years, kept up a habit of weekly correspondence. It was this same habit that had at last brought about the former pupil’s return to the convent, several months after a letter had informed her that the man she had thought of as her father for most of her life had passed away.

“Father,” the young woman now cried out, her voice breaking as she caught sight of Valjean.

Valjean was trembling again, but he no longer had eyes for Javert.

“Cosette—Madame—it is you,” he stammered, his eyes wide, the wounds in his palms still bleeding, so that the postulant gasped and fell to her knees.

“Father,” Cosette cried again, and lifting her skirts, she ran through the snow, falling to her knees in front of him. “For half a year I have mourned you. How cruel it was of you to leave without saying goodbye. And then that letter that said you had died! Oh, how I wept! But let’s not talk of that now, father. You are here!”

“You are here,” Valjean mumbled, confused and overwhelmed. When Cosette threw her arms around him, he held her close. There were tears on his face, but the church bells were still ringing, and the joy he felt at that moment was so great that he could not give words to it. All he could do was hold her close and weep, grateful that he had been rescued from the thorns of his dreams so that he had lived to see this moment.

The rose had slipped from his fingers when he had embraced her. It rested in the snow, crimson like the blood that had dripped from Valjean’s hands. It was Javert who took hold of it now, and who knew not how to react to what had come to pass before his eyes.

And yet, Javert could not forget Valjean’s promise and the gentle touch of Valjean’s lips.

He held the rose in his hand as he knelt patiently in the snow. The woman was the child Jean Valjean had once taken from the Thénardiers. He did not know what had happened that they should be reunited thus, but his mind, which had once striven for the clarity of justice with the lethal sharpness of a blade, was content to linger on the wonder of the rose in his hand.

Eventually, there was another sound. When Javert looked up, he saw to his great surprise that another had entered the garden—and not through any gate, but from across the wall that rose behind them.

When the man dropped into the snow and pushed himself up, they recognized each other instantly. It was the young lawyer who had come into his office in the police station of No. 14, Rue de Pontoise, and the insurgent whom Jean Valjean had saved at the barricade.

“But you are dead,” the man said, his face pale—and then his gaze fell upon Jean Valjean, who was still embracing Cosette, and he took a step back, held up only by the wall at his back. “It’s impossible!”

Later, Javert learned that Marius Pontmercy had wed Cosette. He also learned that for many months, Pontmercy had believed Jean Valjean to have murdered him at the barricade.

Little by little, as the story unfolded, Javert began to gain an understanding of how Jean Valjean had ended up in the convent, coming to Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus to die. Pontmercy in turn experienced a new surge of that horror that had once overtaken him when Cosette’s admired father turned into an abhorrent convict before his eyes—only at this time, the horror was for himself, who had done the unthinkable and divided a loving father from his child in much the same way that Marius Pontmercy had once been parted from his loving father by a cold-hearted grandfather.

But at that moment, when they were kneeling in the snow, the bells ringing all around them, there were no words that would come to Javert’s lips. There was a rose in his hand, which had bloomed amid the thorn, and in his chest, there was a living, beating heart, which had bloomed there even in the winter of his soul.

The sound of the bells carried far. They were joined by the nearby bells of St. Marguerite, of Saint-Merri, of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, and the Blancs-Manteaux. The wind carried the sweet sound all the way towards the river, where, on the other side, all the bells of Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Séverin joined their chorus.

Snow continued to fall, but none of the people gathered in the garden felt the cold. Instead, Javert’s bare hands still cupped the rose, and he looked at Jean Valjean, who had come to the convent to die, and who had instead, on this night of nights, brought to life something in Javert’s heart.

Valjean did not look up to meet Javert’s gaze. Valjean, his cheeks wet with tears, had pressed his face against his daughter’s hair, but Javert did not mind. He had had his promise earlier, after all. He had the memory of that kiss that still warmed him from within, potent like old wine. And in the ringing of the bells, he could still hear the message of hope that had passed from Valjean’s heart to his own.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is based on the hymn "Maria walks amid the thorn".
> 
>  _Quasi limam in manibus fabri_ : as the file in the hand of the workman.
> 
> This inscription is taken from the part of the Brick that describes the nuns' submission to the prioress (and, I feel, also says a lot about Valjean's issues and everything he internalized during his time in the convent):  
> "Their submission to the prioress is absolute and passive. It is the canonical subjection in the full force of its abnegation. As at the voice of Christ, _ut voci Christi_ , at a gesture, at the first sign, _ad nutum, ad primum signum_ , immediately, with cheerfulness, with perseverance, with a certain blind obedience, _prompte, hilariter, perseveranter et cæca quadam obedientia_ , as the file in the hand of the workman, _quasi limam in manibus fabri_ , without power to read or to write without express permission, _legere vel scribere non addiscerit sine expressa superioris licentia._ "


End file.
